Parent group challenges legality of government's elimination of early immersion

A parent group has launched a court challenge in New Brunswick claiming that the provincial government has broken a contract with parents by eliminating its early French immersion program.

Education Minister Kelly Lamrock announced in March that come September students in elementary school will no longer be able to enter the early French immersion program in Grade 1. The core French program, which makes the second language a mandatory subject in the province's English schools, will also be eliminated for students in early elementary school.

The province is instead introducing a program that will require all Grade 5 students to take a five-month intensive French program that will provide 315 hours of class time in French. In Grade 6, the students and their parents would then have the choice of moving into a late immersion program or continuing to take French as a single-class mandatory subject until they graduate from high school.

According to court documents filed in Saint John on Wednesday, part of the problem with the plan is that it was made after parents had already been allowed to sign up their children for early French immersion.

Paula Small's daughter, Sarah, is currently in kindergarten. The family had attended an information session on the early French immersion program in February and had decided to register Sarah for the fall, Small said.

"They had an information session highlighting the benefits of the French immersion program, what the outcomes were expected to be at various intervals as well as in the final year and we went to that and we received more information and we were sure then that that was the way to go that we made the right choice," she said.

The February 14 registration deadline passed but then just weeks later it was announced the program would not be continuing.

"At first I was shocked. I thought, 'Well, why would they go ahead and register people just mere weeks before and then cancel it?' The process just didn't match what actually the outcome that they were looking for was," Small said.

The group called, Citizens for Educational Choice, raised $15,000 to launch the court case.

Small's affidavit is included among the legal papers that were filed with the court.

The group is asking that the court order the government to delay implementing its new French program by a year.

The legal challenge claims that if the government goes forward with its plan, it is breaching a contract with the parents who have already registered their children for September.

"I really think it's the right thing to do," said Small of the court challenge.